Does anyone doubt the dogwhistle is now being blown?

Duck Soup

I've been watching some of the US election coverage and there is a strange political narrative that's now getting ever more prominent.

It started with the Romney campaign ads about Obama "gutting" (as they/the Heritage Foundation put it) the work requirement for welfare payments.

It's not unusual to pick holes in your opponent's positions, the problem is that this one was a flat out lie, and was flagged as such by every political factchecker from the Washington Post to Politifact.

But instead of retracting it, they doubled, then tripled down. Three variations on the theme started running on TV in the battleground states. As of today, we're now up to 5 Romney campaign ads stating the same false premise.

So why, when you've been caught out lying, why would you keep repeating and multiplying it? Because of electoral maths. The Republican strategists have effectively junked the minority voting blocs. They're not going make a dent in the Obama lead amongst minority voters, never mind win them.

Here's a superb article on the two campaigns' paths to victory, which is invaluable for seeing what drives the strategies and soundbites you're hearing from each campaign.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/political-connections/the-new-math-of-presidential-elections-20120823

The broad thrust of it that Romney needs to win 3 out of 5 white votes. If they can do that, they win. They don't, they lose.

But that's also politically liberating. You can now afford to antagonize one bloc in the service of wooing another. Hence the welfare ads. Hence the voter ID/voter suppression measures. Hence the birther remark. Hence Romney's justification yesterday for the welfare ads, saying Obama was, ahem, 'gutting' work requirements for welfare in order to "shore up his base."

The neatest summation of the Romney position - and strategy arising from it - comes from the National Journal article:

Republican strategists clearly feel the weight of trying to assemble a national majority with so little support among minorities that they must win three in five whites. “This is the last time anyone will try to do this,” one said.

A GOP coalition that relies almost entirely on whites could squeeze out one more narrow victory in November. But if Republicans can’t find more effective ways to bridge the priorities of their conservative core and the diversifying Next America, that weight will grow more daunting every year.

It's getting increasingly blatant and ugly. Keep an eye in the coming weeks for more of the same.

Overheal

I don't think I need to link the clips (we all know them), but the same science was applied to "Weapons of Mass Destruction" rhetoric espoused by the then Bush Administration in Term One. Not trying to dig up the WMD discussion (please don't) but pointing out that we didn't have enough facts to make the claims we were making at the time, and kept doing so in spite of it.

The more you say it, the more it sounds like the truth.

Duck Soup

Chris Matthews, on Monday's Morning Joe, could not contain his anger at Reince Priebus, the RNC chairman.

What was most astonishing to me about this exchange was Priebus - having just been called out on racial dogwhistles - scarcely missed a beat before going into how stimulus packages and single mandates were 'European'.

Every expression of Obama's 'Otherness' (i.e. not mainstream white American) are now being given vent. He "doesn't understand America". He "doesn't believe in the American dream."

It's shameless and getting worse.

poeticseraphim

If they want 3 out 5 white votes they need to gain a percentage of the female vote.


I don't see that happening they are turning their backs on women too.

I wonder if that is a strategy to simply go for conservative straight white men not on welfare and no one else.

I suppose depending on the numbers we will see.

But the racial subtext has been there from the begining in leaked statements or from 'advisers'.

Remeber the whole 'Shared Anglo Saxon Heritage' thing at the London Olympics.

If they lose will this kind of campaigning damage the Republican party in the long term?

Will it make the liberals and the left more entrenched?

Duck Soup

poeticseraphim wrote: »

If they want 3 out 5 white votes they need to gain a percentage of the female vote.

I don't see that happening they are turning their backs on women too.

I wonder if that is a strategy to simply go for conservative straight white men not on welfare and no one else.

I agree that the policy positions that the Republicans have been taking have hardly been designed to appeal to women, but listening to Howard Fineman on the Martin Bashir show last night, the welfare ads are having some success in a very important sliver of the electorate - white women without college degrees in swing states.

Fineman says that this is not accidental - Republican focus groups had shown that blue collar white women had surprisingly strong views on welfare and welfare recipients.

Thomas Edsall at the NYT makes the point that the welfare ads and the Medicare ads run in tandem. Statistically, the majority of Medicare recipients are white (77%) whereas those currently uninsured who will be covered by the introduction of the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare are predominantly non-white (less than half, only 46.3% are white).

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/27/making-the-election-about-race/

On one level, you almost have to admire the Romney campaign's chutzpah. Political commentators had already started saying that you could no longer win with just a locked-up white Christian base, as Dubya, Bush Senior and Nixon did. The common wisdom is those days have gone. The Romney campaign is ignoring that common wisdom, possibly encouraged by the voter ID/voter suppression tactics at state level. As the Republican strategist said, this will be last election you'll be able to pull off a win-with-whites tactic.

Romney's numbers are up amongst white voters and I think we'll see him continue the strategy to raise them some more. Even if it does start to raise some media/commentariat heckles, that's fine by the Romney campaign. It means (a) white voters get the sense that he's on their side and (b) the more it becomes a more fractious debate divided along race lines, the more they expect white voters to rally to the Romney standard.

Notice also that it's a two track strategy - defining Romney as the saviour of white interests (keeping money in Medicare for white folk to stop it being spent on Obamacare's uninsured non-white folk) and casting Obama as the panderer to non-white interests (which is what the welfare ads are all about).

Ugly stuff.

joseph brand

From the OP's link:

The numerator challenge is that economic dislocation, disappointment in Obama, and voter-identification laws passed in Republican-controlled states could depress minority turnout.

Voter fraud is not the scary problem the GOP would try to have us believe. Although, the irony is that Reps are the worst offenders. Just ask the soon-to-be-ex wife of Robin Vos.

Romney's birther 'joke' was intentional. Was it supposed to be funny? Yes. But only if you're in the Tea Party. I've heard it a few times but I still don't get it. His joke about the 'trees all being the right height' or colour or whatever was better.

He's going all out for the white vote.

Old: Singing for grannies in Florida.
or ignorant: "Can't tell you how I'll fix your country, just trust me".
or racist: Mentioning food stamps, welfare and birth certificates.
or rich: Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson. They're worth $50 billion and $25 billion respectively. Three guys worth $75 billion???? :eek::eek:
They're old and still want more. Insatiable. Have they ever tried eating money?

The GOP would like to wax lyrical about how the rich work hard and all that jazz. The Koch bros inherited their wealth from a very wealthy daddy. Romney's daddy had a few shillings. I'm not sure about Shelley but I'll have my beautiful secretary look into it.

Overheal

There are still high ranking GOP figures getting on TV and saying things like "Obama said [they] didn't build their businesses."

If nothing else, they're exemplifying their ignorance and ability to comprehend contextual cues. But in reality, they're just twisting another soundbyte to cement more votes, of people who can't be bothered to interpret for themselves what the man said.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jul/26/mitt-romney/putting-mitt-romneys-attacks-you-didnt-build-truth/

After all, if the man can't interpret the correct meaning of something someone said in plain english, why should I trust him to understand a more delicate situation when someone is speaking in Arabic?